"I do not think that physical releases have a future" - Henning, Aaahh RecordsIn my early days of running this blog, I found the Aaahh Records site. I have downloaded a lot of their releases, album and singles. They also have festival, which seems so great. Then I sent them email to propose an interview not long after I created this blog. Finally, Henning is here, answering my questions. Please have an enjoy reading

Can you tell me a little bit about Aaahh Records? What and where is it, when did you start this, and what makes you think to have to make this label? We started aaahh in 2008 as a netlabel with focus on handmade music. That was after we worked in music journalism for some time and felt it would be an interesting challenge to switch sides. In opposite to other netlabels we released relatively few records. From the very beginning we aimed for quality, which means, we tried to put a lot of work into a release and to get to know and support our artists even beyond the mere release of a record. Unfortunately we could not keep up this time-consuming work. That is why we nowadays see us as collective of artists and friends, who first and foremost organise an annual festival with preceding music workshop. This is some sort of a hobby for us; we cannot work 24/7 for the label any longer. Therefore we (almost) do not release new albums anymore. However, we publish the results of the workshop and we recently started a series of single releases.How many releases do you have? Seventeen – excluding single releases and specials.

How many people running this label? There have been some changes of personnel over the years. At present we are a group of four good friends.

When I listened to your releases, I think most of your releases are pop/folk band or something like that. Am I wrong with this? You are right. When we started the label, we did not intend to limit our catalogue to a specific genre. We did not plan to release that much folk. It just happened. Presumably the music on aaahh-records.net will become a little more varied through the festival and the single releases. Actually, what kind of music can be released by your label? Well, what can be released? Everything we like, I guess. You want specifications? Impossible. We love Heavy Metal as we love Jazz. Everything may happen. As we never tried to earn big money with aaahh, we never felt the need to please a certain audience.You told me that you started to focus on digital singles. Can you tell me why you do not release as many as you used to anymore? I already dipped into this whole topic a little. First of all: We were never famous for a high quantity of releases. We just wanted to make sure every artist got the attention he deserved. If we release a full album, we also want to admit someone to our sect-like circle of friends. That is why we do not see the singles as proper releases. aaahh functions more like a platform in this regard. We merely introduce artists we like to a wider audience. How is the process of searching the band, ask them join your label, then release them? Can you tell me a little bit. We have not done this for quite some time and it can be quite different. For example, Chuck Morgan and I lived in the same city for some time. We did not meet because of aaahh or him being a musician. He was just someone I befriended and found out later that he actually is a skilled songwriter. That is when I asked him, if he wanted to release something on aaahh. Most of the time we did not really search for bands. We just have been listening to a lot of music and went to concerts a lot. The release itself can be hard work – depending on what an artist expects, what he is able and willing to do without our aid, et cetera. In our case a release had mostly to do with promotion and when it comes to promotion there is almost no limit in what you can do. This ranges from simple promotional texts and the mobilisation of press contacts, up to the production of video teasers. We also have some physical releases, which are not any less time-consuming. Then, why netlabel? We never saw ourselves as a standard netlabel. We always tried to be a combination of a classic label and a netlabel. This meant we wanted to push all our artists into the real world, which included for example encouragement to go on tour. Of course, we used Creative Commons licences like most netlabels do. When we started, we were a little more idealistic about the possibilities a netlabel would offer. Nowadays it feels as if the independence we and many other netlabels wanted to give to our artists has actually led to a little demise of the netlabel scene as we knew it. We consider this to be a good thing. It feels as if you have quite a lot of possibilities to promote yourself as an independent musician in 2014. This is partly the reason why we changed the way we work. What is your opinion about a statement: physical release is the best music documentation? This one seems a little puzzling. In case you mean historical documentation, then I agree with you and would like to add that this is a big advantage of vinyl. It is of course a difficult task to make predictions about the future, but a digital dark age seems at least possible. Do the bands in your catalogue have physical release too outside your label? Some have. This includes independently released records as well as records that have been released by other labels. Do you think in the future, physical release will be changed by netlabel download? To be quite frank: I do not think that physical releases have a future. They may be of importance for my generation, because we grew up with physical releases. We at aaahh always liked the idea of a physical release for several reasons. For example, we wanted to offer a possibility for fans to support an artist. We partly saw a physical release as a symbolic object. So, will physical releases be changed by music downloads or - to phrase it differently - digital distribution? Yes, I believe that. The question, if this will happen through netlabel downloads is of minor importance to me. It will be some form of digital release. How is the netlabel movement in your country? Is there a lot of netlabel beside you there today? Mention some of them please.. As mentioned, it feels as if the netlabel scene is not what it used to be anymore and this is not necessarily bad. We like the approach of Beep! Beep! Back up the Truck and our old mates of 23seconds. Neither is a German netlabel. I do not believe, that it is important from where a label originates. At least both of these are close to our current residences (Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg) – Beep! Beep! is based in Utrecht in the Netherlands and 23seconds in Gothenburg, Sweden. One interesting thing I found in your label is you have an annual festival called Braaahhiltz. Please tell me about that. What is it, where it is started and how is the idea to make a festival come from? I told you about our wish to make the world of netlabels more accessible in the physical world. Hence the idea to curate a festival is pretty old. In 2011 we began to organise workshops for our artists and everybody seemed to like the idea of an annual gettogether. The next step – to conclude these workshops with a festvial – felt almost natural to us. The musicians work on new material for a week and through the festival they have a possibility to present it right away. The first proper aaahh festival took place in Bralitz, a small village in the middle of nowhere near the German-Polish border. We found an old train station that seemed ideal for our needs. That is why we would like to stay in Bralitz for the next couple of years and develop our little festival step by step. The work surrounding the festival is our main focus at present.How is the respond of the people about this festival? You have a lot of people coming? I saw the photograph in your site, it looked fun and the place is cool! In 2013 we planned with a very small audience – only 150 people. We intended to organise the festival in any case, all we needed was a crowd. That is why we invented our very own crowd funding system called crowd finding: People could pay whatever they liked for a festival ticket. In theory somebody could have acquired a festival ticket for free. But in the end everybody donated at least some money, we sold out some weeks before the festival and everything went smoothly. We even had a little profit, which will be completely reinvested into this years festvial. We still do not intend to gain riches with our work. We do it, because it is fun and because it enables us to meet so many fantastic people. This year we aim for an audience of 250 – still a quite familiar atmosphere.Any other events beside the festival? At present the festival eats up the lion's share of our time. We do not plan other events.Oh I want to ask you about ‘Miss You’ EP. What is this? A documentation or what? Because there are some tracks like ‘Slackline’ and ‘Fire’ that has no music in it. When we started to organise these annual music workshops for our artists in 2011, we wanted to release the songs they had worked on for a week. In 2011 we met in Denmark. That is why the concluding release had a very Danish look and several influences from the surrounding area. In 2012 – our first workshop in Bralitz, Germany – the following release consequentially had a Bralitz-charme to it. The Miss You EP from 2013 continues this concept. Even more than before, we wanted to include the sound of Bralitz, meaning sounds we recorded during the weeklong workshop and our first festival. With the Miss You EP we would like to spread the word about what a ridiculously good time we had during our Braaahhlitz festvial and of course we would like to encourage everyone to join us for the next one in 2014 (29th to 31st of August).This is the last question. If I ask you to recommend three bands/musicians in your label or around you, what will they be? My personal favourite of our catalogue would be Keyboard Rebels' Pop Grenade. Sadly, the Rebels are not full time musicians. They also have not been very musically active during the last couple of years. That is why I would like to promote These Animals, Uniform Motion and Entertainment for the Braindead. These three are arguably the most active of our artists. All of them also play live on a regular basis.Well, thank you so much for this interview, Henning. All the best for you and keep releasing good music!Visit their site to grab some downloads and like their Facebook page to keep you updated